This review has been updated a year in, with an improved thermostat with built-in display and touch-sensitive controls, and new fuel-saving figures.

Affordable home automation has been a long time coming. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed that it’s the 21st Century and homes still don’t have Star Trek style swishy doors as standard.

But iPhone-controlled heating and lighting is here today. Nest hasn’t yet made it to the UK, so I decided to try out competitor system Tado, which is available in Europe now.

In the UK, it costs £199 if your system already has a wired thermostat, or £278 if it doesn’t. Alternatively, you can rent Tado for either £4.99 or £7.98/month. Looking at my own energy usage before and after, the payback time is a little under three years.

The concept

The idea behind Tado is three-fold. First, automation. As well as the programmable timer you have in any heating system, it also monitors the locations of everyone in the household via their iPhones (or Android phones). If everyone is out, it turns down the heating even if the timer says it should be on.

How much it turns it down depends on how far away you are, because it aims to have it back up to temperature by the time you return. Nip out to the local grocery store, and it won’t adjust it much, drive an hour to work and it’ll turn it down a lot …

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Second, intelligence. The system learns how long it takes your home to heat up and cool down, so rather than do the dumb thermostat thing and keep the heating on until it hits the target temperature, it learns, for example, that it can switch off 1.2 degrees sooner because the latent heat in the radiators continues to heat rooms even after the boiler goes off.

It also monitors the weather via the Internet, so if it knows it has to get the home up to 21C in two hours but can see that the sun will help, it will wait longer before it turns up the heating.

Third, remote control. If you want to take manual control, you don’t need to wander over to the wall thermostat (which Tado replaces with a featureless white box), you simply adjust things on your iPhone.

The app works via mobile data as well as wifi, so you can control your heating system from anywhere in the world. Granted, with presence detection you shouldn’t need to, so that may fall into the ‘cool trick to demonstrate to your mates in the bar’ category.

In the box

Tado arrived in an impressively small cardboard box. Inside were three small white plastic boxes: an electronic thermostat, a solar-powered temperature sensor and a wifi gateway to connect to your router. All three devices talk to each other via wifi. There was also a short Ethernet cable to connect the gateway, a USB power lead for it and a few other bits & pieces for the installation.

Update: Tado now has a new thermostat with a subtle temperature display, and the ability to adjust the temperature from the thermostat itself:

Installation

Tado offers two options for installation. You can either pay for a Tado engineer to install it, or do it yourself. Installation complexity depends on the system you have: if you have a non-combi system, I recommend professional installation. I have the DIY skills of a left-handed cat, so I let Tado do it, which took around 40 minutes.

Tado asked me to plug in the wireless gateway box before the installer arrived, and check I got two solid lights – for router and Internet. Once the engineer arrived, he switched off my boiler and heating system power supply, removed the old thermostat from the wall and wired-up the Tado box. The video above shows you what’s involved, and the setup stage (below) walks you through it. Finally, I set my existing programmable timer to ‘always on’ as Tado would be taking over its duties.

There’s a slightly different setup if you don’t have an existing wall thermostat.

Initial setup

Initial setup is done on the web. The box contained a card with a username and password (both of which can be changed once you’re logged-in), and you connect to www.tado.com/login. Once there, I was guided through the steps needed to install and configure the system. As the engineer had done the installation, mostly I was just hitting the Next button.

I also clicked the Account tab and changed both username and password, as the Tado-supplied ones were far from memorable. The system is reasonably secure in that additional users can only be added whilst in your home (more on this in a moment), but given that I have the sort of friends who would find it amusing to add themselves when visiting and turn the heating down or up remotely later, I set a strong password …

Once you’ve done the web bit, you can download the app and go into the settings. There are three things you need to set to get started.

First, normal and night-time temperatures. Europe measures temperatures in celcius, so the temperatures might look unfamiliar to Americans. What I have set here is the equivalent of 70F as the normal temperature and 60F overnight.

Second, what Tado calls Comfort Setting. If you want your home fully up to temperature by the time you arrive home in the evening, you set the slider all the way to Comfort. If you are happy for it to ramp up after you arrive, set it to Savings. There’s also a compromise setting in the middle.

Finally, you set the programmable timer in much the same way you would with your physical one: telling the system what time to switch on and off. You have the choice of the same schedule every day, separate weekday and weekend schedules, or individual schedules for every single day. I work from home so set a single schedule.

Using the app

This is the home screen. Here, I’m within normal hours, so the screen is orange. It displays the current temperature, the target temperature and an up arrow to indicate that is heating up the home. Finally, it shows that two of us are home.

Others in your household need to download the app to be recognised. You give them the login details, and they will then be logged as additional residents. You can allow guests to register, as you have the ability to remove registered users from the web app afterwards.

I set the system to go into night mode at 00:30. Sure enough, at that time the app screen turned blue and the temperature started dropping to my preset night temperature.

Learning phase

The first evening, I started seeing some very odd behaviour. Tado switched the heating off and on seemingly randomly. Once it switched off while it was a full two degrees below my target temperature, then switched it back on around 20 minutes later, then switched it off again when it was 1.8 degrees below.

After a while, though, it settled down, and I guessed it was learning how long my home takes to heat up and cool down, and the ‘lag factor’ – how long the air temperature continues to increase after the heating goes off. Tado confirmed this when I spoke with them.

This is part of how Tado saves you money: switching off the heating as soon as it knows the target temperature will be reached, without actually waiting for it to get there. Two or three days in, it was controlling things far more smoothly and accurately

Leaving home

The second really clever part, of course, is the presence detection. If all registered residents are out, then it will turn the heating down even if the timer says it should be on. This is the main way it saves money, by not heating an empty home.

There is a safety feature: a fallback temperature of 5C (41F). Even if nobody is home, and even if the timer says the heating should be off, Tado won’t let the temperature fall below 5C. This ensures that pipes won’t freeze, and nor will any pets.

There is also a manual Home button on the thermostat: if you have someone in your home who doesn’t have a smartphone, or who you don’t want to register on your system, they can press the thermostat button and then Tado will know someone is home and behave exactly as if a registered resident were detected.

Returning home

Once Tado sees that someone is on the way home, it turns the heating up. If you’ve set it to Comfort, it tries to ensure it’s fully back up to temperature by the time you get home.

In general, this worked really well, Tado getting the place back up to the target temperature of 21C by the time I arrived home. When it could see I was arriving home late at night, it only brought the place up to the night time temperature.

Problems & weaknesses

I did discover two problems with the system, both with presence-detection.

First, the location-checking really hammered the iPhone battery. This issue was greatly improved by a software update, though the battery monitor in iOS 8 still shows the app to be power-hungry:

Second, once my battery died, Tado of course no longer knew where I was, so couldn’t turn the heating back up. Worse, even when I charged the phone, it still didn’t recognise me as home. This was a bug Tado subsequently fixed.

I also found two weaknesses. First, the minimum night-time temperature you can set is 15C (59F). Personally I prefer a cooler air temperature and a warm duvet. Tado says it set this limit for energy efficiency: it uses less energy in total to keep the heating on at night at 15C than letting it cool further and then have to work harder to heat up to daytime temperature. From subsequent power bills, this appears to be a solid argument.

The other weakness is that you can’t set different target temperatures for different times of the day. I work from a home office, which is upstairs and thus warmer than the living-room downstairs. Tado is always taking the temperature reading from the thermostat downstairs. It would be ideal if I could set one temperature for office hours and a different one for the evening. I do, though, recognise that home-workers are a bit of an edge case, so changing the target temperature half an hour before I finish work is something I can live with.

Conclusions

Let’s start with my only complaints …

The battery-killing issue was a big one, but was reduced to a manageable level.

The wall unit isn’t as pretty and hi-tech looking as Nest, though the new version is a distinct improvement. While it’s inoffensive enough – not quite the “white plastic crap” Nest says it wants to remove from our homes – it won’t make your visitors go ‘Oooh.’ But then the company is German, where understated is the name of the game.

That aside, Tado is brilliant. It’s easy to use, does what it claims, should save money – oh, and it’s a gadget. What’s not to like?

Update: My gas savings after a year amount to around 7% – a pretty healthy saving.

For people whose schedule can be unpredictable, which is probably most of us these days, it’s great knowing that the house will be warm when you get home without wasting money heating it while empty.

You do need everyone in the home to have a smartphone, but that’s not really likely to be an issue for the typical 9to5 reader’s household. We hope to be able to review Nest too, to compare the two, but Tado is certainly a system I can recommend.

About the Author

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels published to date, and an SF novella series coming in March 2017.

Not mentioned in the review: the Tado (like the Nest) does not support mains-supplied baseboard heating, which is surprising for a European product as they use electric baseboard a lot (apparently, according to Nest’s early information). Even in America, a lot of older apartment buildings use electric baseboard. Nest has alluded to be working on a solution since its introduction, but alas still no product.

Sad for me, my antebellum apartment uses……240v electric baseboard. I’m stuck using a crappy Honeywell that they couldn’t even see fit to design with a light-up LCD. Ugh. Honeywell can suck it.

I went into my local Apple Store here in the UK at the weekend and they had the Nest smoke alarm on the accessories section but I haven’t seen the thermostat product here yet. Thanks for the comprehensive review of Tado.

My tado arrived a few days ago, I installed it myself easily enough and I’ve been very impressed with how well it works! Just needs to be less of a drain on my battery, but I’m sure it’s going to save me money. Who needs Nest??

Can you stop the geolocation part of the app that seems to drain the battery? If so, I’m quite content to use the app to turn down the heating whenever I’m away from home for a day or two and then turn it back up via the app whenever I’m on my way home.

What I’m doing at the moment is switching off geolocation once I reach my destination. Settings -> Privacy -> Location settings, then slide Tado to Off. You then have to remember to switch it back on when ready to set off for home. It’s not ideal, but is hopefully a short-term issue.

We (flat-share of 3) got Tado a bit over a month ago. Installed it ourselves with no problems. When we first installed Tado the iOS app worked just fine. It didn’t need to be open all the time and geo-location was working in the background with no noticeable battery issue. However since the iOS app was updated we had lots of issues. Now the app needs to be open all the time (when you close it now you get a warning telling you to keep it open, once you re-open it) in order to work properly and the battery drainage is quite bad! So the update to the app was a step back! One of us in on Android – with no issues. His location detection is the most accurate of the three of us. With iOS it sometime takes quite some time for Tado to realise that you’ve left the flat! Also the Android app works in the background (like the iOS app used to).

I really hope they will fix these issues with the iOS app soon! Love the concept, but at the moment it isn’t working like it should be!

What is probably also worth a mention: In the room where the Tado box is installed in place of the thermostat the heating needs to bee on the highest setting (on the heaters/radiators). If they are on a lower setting the reference temperature is off and it will be hotter in the other rooms as Tado tries to bring the room it is in to the set temperature on a lower setting. At the beginning on of my flatmates did not realise this and but the radiator settings down which caused Tado to run the heating all day trying to raise the temperature…

I have just ordered a Tado based on the above review, before reading the comments here about the iOS app. I’m assuming they will fix this in software update! But i couldn’t find any info about their refund policy if i’m not satisfied with my Tado? Does anyone know the deal?

My wife would have liked a little window in Tado’s square wall ‘thermostat’ indicating the room temperature. It surely would have been a much more attractive selling point. Was there a reason that Tado didn’t do that?

Bit confused by this bit: “The other weakness is that you can’t set different target temperatures for different times of the day.”

Does this mean that you can only have a day and night temperature set unless you manually override it? My current thermostat lets me set five different temperatures over the course of the day (and only cost 40 quid). Please correct me if I am misinterpreting.

That’s correct, but of course the main reason for needing multiple temps on a conventional system is to cater for when people are in and out, which Tado does automatically. But Tado has said this is a feature it will consider if they get enough demand, as they already have for a lower night temperature.

Seriously considering Tado as I’m fed up with complete lack of info from NEST re- their UK launch. Having initially hinted 2013 there was silence, then another hint of November but you just try and get any info from NEST and you get “we’re working on it!”. Doesn’t say much for their capability if they have been ‘working on it’ for all this time! If they do intend to release in the UK then they must have a plan – in which case they could share their anticipated appeox. timescales with all the people asking and we can make an informed decision but the continued fobbing off with a non-answer smacks of treating customers with contempt. Looks like I’ll be voting with my feet and flying the NEST.

Tado has distinct advantages over Nest in the UK – it’s here, it’s tested, it works, it can be rented at £7 monthly, it needs no 24V AC to 240V DC circuit change, it is connected free of charge ( if ordered in December) and the management responds to the customers.
Nest is the same price and has the advantage of looking nice.
That’s about the difference in a nutshell.
Tado are already working on the phone battery problem and say they will have it resolved within 2 weeks.
Imagine what the response to a similar problem for Nest ……if it’s taken a year to tell us about the future of Nest in the UK then once a launch occurs and problems are found then it may be another year before anyone is told of a solution !!!

Don’t hold your breath! I’ve tried their Community and Twitter as well to no avail. November has come and gone and still no word. I really would expect them to show their prospective customers more respect and be more open and honest.

I ordered Tado last night – it’s here, it works and the company engages with its customers. Nest lost me as a prospective customer which mean I now won’t be buying their Protect device either.

What are the differences between this system and the Smart Wifi thermostat of Greenmomit? Their thermostat seem to have more options and a touchable screen as well !this is the website http://www.greenmomit.com

Check out this explanation of the Geolocation feature. I’ve had my Tado now for 4 months and been using it actively since October. Works perfect! Installation was easy and app is straight forward. My battery iPhone 5S is not draining at all due to Tado running in background. But, it’s a new hone, so that might change in the future. And of course it helps to install double pane and insulation, to keep the heat inside….

Tado looks great but I have 2 main comments:
1) I use the existing Heatmiser wifi system (Heatmiser PRTHW-TS WiFi) which allows me to everything I need from an app. It has two advantages over the Tado – it controls hot water as well and you can set different temperatures for different times of day. It’s a lot chepaer, and it does not drain my mobile (but that’s because it is not monitoring where I am).

2.)Tado has no zoning and this is important – especially for me as my house is big and family comes and goes. Tado must include radio controlled radiator valves if their product is going to compete with (eg) Honeywell’s Evohome system (out next year) or British Gas Hive.

Note the clever environmental stuff is done by Tado off site – managed from Munich I guess – and there is nothing stopping Honeywell or anyone else doing that kind of thing in the coming months. I can’t imagine Tado patenting that as an idea because there is already plenty of public domain info on this out there.

Why all the fuss about Nest in the replies here? It was an early mover in this business, but will get overtaken – compare Android sales to iphone sales if you like. As someone else said, sturdy competition is needed and welcome. I for one will shiver for another winter to see what emerges .

That’s good to hear. I have now ordered my Tado and will arrive/be installed for free in the middle of January. So with you having had Tado for exactly a month, do you feel you’ve saved money and has it been working simply and to your satisfaction (apart from the now resolved battery problem) with no other issues apparent?

I’m very pleased with it. I haven’t yet had a bill to compare numbers, but I’m very confident it will have saved money. I had a fault with it yesterday, which appears to be a hardware issue, and Tado is delivering a replacement unit tomorrow. All the electronics is in the outer part, so it should be just a case of unscrewing one screw and replacing that part without any wiring involved.

Sounds like good aftersales service, then. You don’t want it malfunctioning over the long Christmas break, though so it will be it will be interesting in 2 aspects – firstly how long did the replacement part take to arrive and secondly how easy was it to fit? Did you have to switch off the 240volt connection?

That’s extremely good service. One nagging doubt I have is regarding that bit of hardware failure after just 1 month. Just how reliable will Tado’s unit be over the next few years? I believe I read that the unit has a 5 year warranty, so that’s comforting. Are your expectations of use extending beyond that 5 years? I ask because I’m replacing the 60 year-old bimetallic thermostat (the original one in this house) with Tado. Hardware and software failure record over 60 years is zero !! Can Tado compete with that?

As a gadget man, I tend to not expect to be using any of today’s tech in 5 years, so I’m not really looking beyond that. It’s taken a long time for heating to get hi-tech, but now that it has, I should think there will be quite a lot of developments in this area over the next few years.

Who actually fits the kit in the uk?
What sort of systems have people had the tado kit connected too. I have a Worcester cdi30 green star with inbuilt wifi/controller -what happens to this does it remain connected and just switched to always on?

Hi, just curious to know if you have received your tado kit yet and if it has been installed? I too ordered mine at the end of December for dispatch on 13th January. However I’ve had no info regarding the kit being dispatched nor have I had an engineer call to arrange the install. Tado’s support does not seem great with the few times I’ve tried to contact them already. I hope this isn’t because I chose to rent the kit rather than buy it!

Hi – Me too – still not had any info – they’ve taken the funds from the CC for the years rental. Nothing about engineer installation date. I’m going to give them a couple more days then get on to them.

Thanks for the reply guys. I had the same message from tado customer support regarding the install. I have since contacted them via their Facebook page and they respond very quickly. However they said they would have someone contact me today regarding delivery and unfortunately I haven’t be contacted. It seems a common trend at the moment as they are in high demand and the installers apparently have a backlog to get through, I guess many people ordered during the free installation offer. However its not a great sign. By the time its installed at this rate winter will be over and it will be a pretty pointless device for the next 6-8 months.

I ordered 28th December with an expected shipping date of 13th January. Having heard nothing since, I chased Tado up today via email only to be told delivery is now expected last week in February. Add on a week or two for installation and you are getting very close to the point where don’t really need heating until autumn. I’ve pretty much decided to cancel and see what Google buying Nest will produce and how British Gas will enhace Hive. Sad really as Tado looks a good product but just think they aren’t geared up for the demand.

December 16 : Placed my order
January 13 : Expected shipping date
January 17 : Shipped
Will be in house and installed by end of January.
Wet and mild weather throughout January
Cold weather expectation : end of January
No complaints.

I too have been told that I won’t receive my Tado kit until at least 10th Feb. I ordered around 27th December. Once you factor in the install time too it probably won’t be installed until the end of Feb. I explained to Tado that I wasn’t happy they took the money so soon when they clearly can’t get the kit to me any time soon. They explained this was apparently due to the type of card i used to pay (visa debit) and so they had to take the money straight away. They then offered to give me the money back into my account and then take the money when the Tado kit is shipped (completely disregarding their earlier comment) I said no and cancelled my order. I will now wait to see what Nest can do over here in the UK and likely go with them.

Interestingly enough I was contacted by the installers last night (20th) by email to arrange a time to install but the Tado connector kit hasn’t arrived yet. Looking at the shipment tracking the Tado connector kit has at least arrived in the UK. Maybe to be delivered on the 22nd?

Delivered on the 22nd :) Had a little trouble getting the installers around but finally installed on the 28th :) The installer gave me two choices 1) Just replace the thermostat or 2) replace the thermostat and programmer? I opted for the 1st choice as I only wanted to control the heating and not heating plus water. The programmer is now permanently on for the heating but temperature controlled by Tado. The hot water is still controlled by the programmer. To be perfectly honest I could have done the installation myself but as it was free I waited for the installer. It probably would have been much more difficult if I opted for the 2nd choice? Once you have navigated through the online installation process and the Tado servers can see that everything is functioning correctly the setup process is very quick and easy. So far so good :)

Two days in and it looks like I have an issue with my portable thermostat :( For the last two nights my thermostat has lost connectivity to the Internet and I am prompted to reset. Connectivity is briefly returned but then lost again. As soon as I attach the USB charger normal service is resumed. I contacted Tado support via email and they believe I have a faulty thermostat and will send a replacement :)

Hello, One question that I can seem to find a clear answer on is can you control the hot water? My current control has a button for the heating and one for the hot water. As our water tank is pretty small, we often have the hot water switched on independently of the heating. I’m itching to get one (especially as the free installation has been extended to 15th Jan) and this is the last hurdle.

Just ordered mine. On the hot water… your method might not work so well in summer. If your comfort level is, say 20C, presumably on warm days the heating will not be triggered and you won’t have any hot water either. Not so much an issue in the UK in the morning, but might be for evening washing up duty.

I’ve got the latest gen Airport Time Capsule – with ethernet ports on the back – could the TADO box be plugged into this or does it need to be the router? I ask because my router just has the one output which goes to the time capsule. thanks

Ordered in Dec, Tado apologized for late shipment – sent me a tado Tshirt and chocolate. Kit arrived Jan17th and installed today (22nd) in 30mins by their installer. Early days but very impressed so far. Will update once the system beds in

Buyer beware. I am UK based, I own this product and I can say it is crap. Don’t buy. It doesn’t work. I don’t know what kind of idiots have designed this thing but they really managed to screw it up. The thermostat doesn’t register on the iPhone app half the time and it doesn’t control the heating properly. Last night the house was at 21 deg all night. This is an example of piss poor execution and a complete waste of money!!!!!!!

I’ve ordered tado° on december 20th and delivery date was set for january 13th. Later on I received an email that delayed the delivery to February 10th. Today I received another email saying that delivery has been delayed again till February 27th. As I already told their support team I have already been billed on my credit card on December 21st and this means more than a month ago.
I think this delaying game does not play god at all for tado° should I still trust them?

OK, been around 4 weeks now since installation and Tado is working well. Lets start with:
1) On both my wifes iphone5 and my android HTC One – Tado app works perfectly. No battery drain and the presence detection is always correct
2)Our house feels a more consistent even temperature (no more too hot /too cold moments
3) Only had one error from the solar thermostat where it asked for a reset – i suspect lack of charge in it. Gave it a another charge via usb – been fine since
4) Tado website has been very useful and always up n available

The only small gripe i have is mentioned earlier in the comments here. Would be great if Tado let you set different target temps for daytime and evening when I’m less active! – If they added this feature I’d probably never even look at the tado app on my phone as it does it job without any fuss. I only ever launch the app to change the target temp later in the evening.
One other thing to note is maximum temp only goes to 25C – so if you have one of those wifes who was a cat in a previous life and lovvvves the heating on full tilt – 25C may not cut it! ( my ol honeywell T40 went up to 30c)

Update: Having now has a chance to see my bills for almost a full quarter, they are 4.5% lower. Given that we’ve had a particularly cold winter in the UK, I’d say that probably underestimates the saving. You’d have to look at your own gas bills to see what the payback period would be on a 4.5% saving.

Decided to rent the tado for a year and see what happens with NEST, I got a 10% discount from tado due to me starting to place an order then changing my mind to read up a bit more. Cost me £83 delivered for 12mths which I can cancel at any time and any months not used will be refunded and I keep the hardware, couldn’t say fairer than that so I ordered yesterday for delivery 27th February. Thanks everyone for their comments.

Just to answer a previous comment. Tado does support control for hot water (it will follow the sleep/wake cycle of the heating), it just has to be wired correctly and then ask support to activate this feature. I have no idea why it is not activated as standard.